Monday, April 11, 2011

Currently reading: SHADOW SISTER by Simone Van Der Vlugt

As I said last week, in 2011 I am once again participating in the Global Reading Challenge. , created by writer, reviewer and blogger Dorte Jakobsen of DJ's Krimiblog and CANDIED CRIME fame.

This year have already read more than the three European novels needed for the Expert level, and from at least three countries (Scotland, Ireland, England, Sweden). However I've decided that I will try to expand my European choices to include more translated fiction, so I am currently reading SHADOW SISTER by Simone Van Der Vlugt, who is dubbed "Holland's Queen of Crime".

SHADOW SISTER was originally published in Dutch in 2005, but has recently become Van Der Vlugt's second psychological thriller to be translated into English. Here is the blurb for the English-language version (pictured):

"Lydia and Elisa, twin sisters, identical in appearance, different in every other way. When Lydia is threatened by one of her students, her sister is the first person she turns to. But Elisa is powerless to stop what follows: threatening letters, smashed windows. How far will this student go? Or is someone else taking advantage of the situation? And what part does Elisa play in all of this? Twins are close… aren’t they?"

I am about 60 per cent of the way through, and enjoying it thusfar. There's a creeping sense of unease, and the way the story shifts between the perspectives of the two twin sisters, the reader is very well aware from the start that something horrific has happened. We just don't know why, or by who, or exactly what, yet.

Have you read SHADOW SISTER or any of Van Der Vlugt's other novels? Have you read any other Dutch crime fiction? Do you like trying translated crime novels? Are you participating in the 2011 Global Reading Challenge? Thoughts welcome.